Big Brother: how Brazil’s broadcasting behemoth became so huge

If a person is what they consume, understanding Brazil involves understanding Big Brother Brasil, or BBB — the Brazilian version of the reality show created in the Netherlands and replicated in roughly 70 countries. At the beginning of 2024, BBB began its 24th edition and, as it does every year, it has been setting social media alight.

Brazilian Big Brother, produced and broadcast by media giant TV Globo, is a curious phenomenon. Its strength rose and fell in other countries where it aired, but BBB’s commercial power is greater than ever. In 2021, for example, around one-fifth of the Brazilian population (40 million people) watched Big Brother every day. 

The most-watched edition in the U.S., in 2000, had a total of 9 million viewers.

And for the votes to determine who will remain in the house and who will be evicted, Big Brother Brasil has recorded some astronomical levels of mobilization. For this year, TV Globo has decided to limit part of the votes to a single vote per person, in order to avoid interference from bots.

One of these eviction night disputes in 2020 — while the Brazilian public was confined in their own homes as well — raised the bar impossibly high. More than 1.5 billion votes were counted, from more than 83 million unique visitors. Globo announced that there were spells of 1.5 million votes arriving per minute. To put that figure into context, the country’s entire electorate contains 156 million voters.

That Big Brother Brasil eviction clash then entered the Guinness World Records as the biggest vote for a television program in the world. The record in the U.S. at the time was 132 million votes for an American Idol final.

Judging by these huge popularity figures, BBB has become a big deal not only for Globo, which promotes the reality show on its different websites and on other television programs, but also for the contestants themselves, who hire professional PR teams to manage their public image while they are on the show. 

Not even a marked drop in television audiences in last year’s edition affected BBB’s commercial performance.

More than competing for the show’s millionaire prize, entering Brazil’s most famous house became a chance to gain millions of social media followers,...